Liz Abinante

Biography

Liz Abinante is an engineer for Instructure and co-leader of the Girl Develop It Chicago chapter. She is infectiously enthusiastic about web development, teaching, learning, and tacos. She enjoys writing and speaking about education, diversity, and happiness in engineering. Previously, Liz has worked as a writer, editor, and knitwear designer.

Sessions for this user

As developers, we tend to value hard skills that can be quantified or measured objectively. Job postings search for unicorns, but we are people first and foremost and being human isn't as easy as programming. While the code comes easily, the soft skills that make us human are complicated and difficult to get right. This talk will explore the danger of neglecting so-called "soft" skills, what we stand to lose by overvaluing technical skills, and alternatives to the hard and soft dichotomy.